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It was a different path this time, one marked by heightened league-wide respect and local playoff expectations. Ownership was unflinchingly confident that it had the right management team and strategy in place. But the Lions' road encountered those familiar detours, leading back to that same question regarding this star-crossed franchise.

Will the Fords ever demand excellence?

The justifications for keeping Jim Schwartz for another season should the Lions lose their last eight games is that William Clay Ford Sr. doesn't like firing those he likes, or that he never permits angry fans or cynical media to dictate how he'll run "his" team.

And don't forget that.

The Lions are his team. They aren't a public trust. Ford Sr. neither holds allegiance nor obligation to those who still haven't abandoned his product despite fans having more than enough reasons to emotionally and financially divorce themselves from this maddening cycle.

Those who know him best insist he desires nothing more in his advancing years than a team that -- if it couldn't actually win a Super Bowl -- at least could be regarded as one of the NFL's precious few that annually contend.

And that's precisely the troublesome dilemma facing the Lions.

If it's generally agreed that the NFL gerrymanders its rules to specifically create an up-and-down league, then it doesn't help the argument in keeping Schwartz beyond this season -- should the Lions meekly meow their way through their concluding two games. It only reaffirms the constant fluidity of NFL mediocrity through a system that rewards the downtrodden with favorable schedules and higher draft picks.

Day inevitably turns to night and then, right on schedule, again sees the morning light -- 6-10 becomes 10-6 and then goes right back to 6-10 and bounces back to 10-6 the next season.

But that's a .500 record over that four-year period. That's not a commitment to excellence. That's not pushing the envelope. That's merely acceptance that it always could be worse.

The Lions could recover next season, but how does that restore the lost confidence in Schwartz and general manager Martin Mayhew when all they have proven is that they can follow the prescribed NFL back-and-forth parity script?

One can only assume that vice chairman Bill Ford Jr. is irate over what has occurred. During a preseason mixer with fans last August, Ford Jr. told them about the grand party awaiting Detroit "when" they make the Super Bowl, not "if."

"(The Super Bowl) is the expectation," he told me just before the season. "That has to be the expectation. We're headed in the right direction, coming off the kind of year we had with the kind of talent we have, expectations are high. And they should be high."

How low must he feel now? Low enough to counsel his father that genuine high expectations for joining regular championship contenders like New England, Pittsburgh and the New York Giants require equally high measure of risk -- demanding significant coaching and front-office changes just a year removed from a rare playoff season because it would require two more seasons to accurately measure if the current team can win consistently, not one.

Tampa Bay coach Raheem Morris went 10-6 his first season. He fell to 4-12 the following season. He got fired after two seasons.

This is what the NFL has become. It often breeds impulsiveness. Take a broom and sweep everyone away. It might not be fair. But if the Fords really care about demanding excellence, they'll strive for a plan that goes against the NFL's sacred plan of competitive parity.